7 Awesome Acts of Nature (That Science Can't Explain)

#3. Red Rain in Kerala

When you think of getting caught in the rain, you typically worry about things like "Will my socks get wet?" and "Do I have time to restraighten my hair?" Unless you lived in the Kerala region of India back in 2001, when the universe douched Kool-Aid all over the subcontinent.

From July to September, Kerala experienced a prolonged period of red rainfall (there was also some black, green and yellow rain, but scientists agreed that the red was way more extreme).

As the summer progressed, colored rain continued to fall from the sky in well-delineated areas, sometimes in places directly adjacent to areas with normal, non-terrifying precipitation. The ground was stained, linens were ruined and numerous little league games were canceled in the red rain's wrathful wake.

Ultimately it was determined that the red coloration was caused by an abundance of a certain type of algal spore, though how the spores themselves came to be in the rainwater has yet to be explained (we like to think they were involved in a race around the globe when their hot air balloon was struck by lightning).

The prevailing theory (and the likely cause of most of these events) is that during particularly shitty weather, waterspouts and tornadoes will scoop up animals, spin them around for a while and then toss them out miles away.

This seems like a reasonable explanation, but it fails to tell us why in most cases, there is only a single species represented in the rain. If a waterspout sucked up a lake, it should rain frogs, snakes and Jason Voorhees, not just fish. Also, this theory has never been successfully proven or replicated; it simply seems to have been accepted as the least retarded one.

#1. Spontaneous Human Combustion

Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) refers to when a person bursts into flame for no apparent reason and burns down into charcoal offal reminiscent of the stuff on the bottom of a bag of overcooked popcorn. As you may have already guessed, this is awesome.

Interestingly, the confusion isn't really about how this happens--scientists have a provable method in something called the Wick Effect, which has been successfully demonstrated on pigs. It shows that if someone a bit lardy catches on fire, their skin and clothing act like the wick of a candle, collecting fat as it melts and allowing it to burn at a constant high temperature for an extended period in a localized area.

The real question is what the hell is setting these people on fire.

So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?

Sometimes people fall asleep or die with a lit cigarette in their mouth, which could conceivably set them ablaze like an octogenarian's birthday cake. It takes about 570 degrees Fahrenheit to get human flesh to combust, though, so unless you're smoking the Devil's pole, this seems unlikely.

Another theory suggests that built up static causes a spark that can instantly turn you into Johnny Storm. This, along with the cigarette theory, tie in with another suggestion that victims of SHC are alcoholics that somehow manage to get a blood alcohol level high enough to turn them into a Bunsen burner. However, a 23 percent concentration of alcohol in the blood would be required to cause ignition, and anyone other than Kiefer Sutherland is typically dead before they hit one percent.

A few more whimsical ideas involve ball lightning, which is our favorite theory because it is kind of like getting hit with a hadouken.

Others suggest something having to do with gamma rays, but neither theory is anywhere close to proven (scientists aren't certain ball lightning exists and gamma ray-producing cosmic events rarely occur within the living room). Science simply cannot agree on the cause of this phenomenon, so really there's nothing we can do except hope someone is able to record our combustion and make a YouTube video set to We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

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